MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE 
BULLETIN 

V0L.XIII OCTOBER, 1918 No. 2 



Emma Willard's 
Life and Work 
In Middlebury 



Published BY the College 

SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, JANUARY, 
FEBRUARY, APRIL, AND JULY 

Entered as second class matter at the Postoffiee, Middlebury, 
Vt., tinder act of Congress of July 16, 1894 



Mrs. Emma Willard's 
Life and Work 

In Middlebury 




PREPARED ORIGINALLY FOR 

THE EMMA WILLARD SOCIETY 

OF NEW YORK 
BY EZRA BRAINERD, LL. D. 



Republished by Middlebury College 
OCTOBER. 1918 




Foreword ^^^t)'^ 

[he gift of Mrs. Russell Sage of $100,000 to 
Middlebury College came as a complete surprise 
to many of the friends of that institution. A few 
months ago the college reprinted Emma Wil- 
lard's " Plan for Female Education " on the one hundredth 
anniversary of the issue of the first edition. The publication 
of the present bulletin will serve as a link to connect Mrs- 
Sage's interest in the life and work of Emma Willard with 
her generous gift to the college. In 1893 Dr. Ezra Brainerd, 
then President of the College, was invited to give an ac- 
count of the early career of Mrs. Willard before the members 
of the Emma Willard Society, who met in Mrs. Sage's house; 
his account aroused much interest and led to a second invita- 
tion in the following year. The first fruits of President Brain- 
erd's services appeared May 6, 1895, in a check of $2000 
received from Mary Seymour Eddy, Treasurer of the Emma 
Willard Society, the fund which established the Emma Willard 
scholarships at Middlebury. In the meantime his story of 
Emma Willard's early life was published by a friend and dis- 
tributed by Mrs. Sage. The present republication of this 
account has a two-fold timeliness. It furnishes the friends of 
Middlebury College with the explanation of the interesting 
way in which Mrs. Sage's friendship for Middlebury began, 
and it marks the centennial of the departure of Emma Willard 
from Middlebury to embark on her later, better-known, and 
eventually more successful educational enterprise in New 
York. Doctor Brainerd's account is republished unchanged, 
save for four minor footnotes which have been added for their 
local interest. 



OJFT 
YHfa!.C«JuLFSf 




MRS. EMMA WILLARD 



Mrs. Emma Willard's Life and 
Work in Middlebury 

By Ezra Brainerd, LL. D. 

Mrs. Emma Willard is known as the pioneer in the great 
movement of the nineteenth century for the higher education of 
woman. To say that she had a genius for teaching, that she devised 
improved methods, that she wrote admirable textbooks, and that she 
impressed her own high ideals upon the characters of her pupils is 
indeed great praise. But it is a still greater glory to have started 
a movement which has revolutionized the ideas of the civilized 
world on the subject of woman's education, a movement which has 
culminated in the founding of grand colleges exclusively for women 
and in the admission of women to older colleges on equal terms 
with men. For it is not too much to say that Wellesley and Vas- 
sar and their sister institutions on either side the Atlantic are the 
fair fruitage, in time, of those seminal ideas so ably set forth in 
Mrs. Willard 's Plan of Female Education. 

It is interesting to study the origin of such a great movement; 
it is like tracing some noble river upward to its sources in the dis- 
tant mountains. Let it be our pleasant task to search out, as far 
as possible, the influences that shaped Mrs. Willard's career as an 
educator. In so doing we shall find that the formative period of 
her life was the twelve years spent in Middlebury — a period passed 
over too cursorily in Dr. Lord's biography. The fresh interest in 
this truly great woman, awakened by the Emma Willard associa- 
tions of the country, is an additional reason for considering more in 
detail the incidents of this portion of her life and for inquiring 
into the moral forces which called forth her grand ideas regarding 
the scope of woman's education. 

[3] 



We should, as a preliminary, call to mind briefly the circum- 
stances of her early life in Connecticut, her excellent parentage, 
the beautiful home life of her childhood, her two years of earnest 
study under Dr. Wells, her brilliant success as a teacher at the 
early age of 17. These facts help us to picture the bright, noble- 
hearted woman who, at the age of 20, came in 1807 to take charge 
of the female academy at Middlebury. 

The influences that shaped her character in her new home were 
from three sources. Let us speak first of her social surround- 
ings. 

The early inhabitants of Middlebury were noted for their en- 
terprise and intelligence. Up to the close of the Revolutionary war 
the Champlain Valley had been for centuries the arena of savage 
warfare. But as soon as the cessation of hostilities would permit 
these fertile lands were rapidly settled by a vigorous and high- 
minded class of young men and women from the best families of 
Connecticut. There was in Middlebury an unusually large num- 
ber of educated men, graduates of Yale and Dartmouth and Brown. 
Of their interest in religion and taste in architecture they have^ 
left a striking monument in the church edifice, that is still stand- 
ing, with its beautiful groined arches and its graceful steeple, after 
the Christopher Wren style. Their devotion to the cause of edu- 
cation is evinced by their establishment, before the beginning of 
the present century, of three distinct institutions of learning — the 
grammar school, the female academy, and the college. The elder 
President Dwight, of Yale, who made three visits to the town prior 
to 1810, has recorded in his books of travels his high appreciation 
of the character of the people and of their educational work. Mrs. 
Willard herself, then Miss Emma Hart, has given emphatic testi- 
mony to the same effect. In a letter to her parents, written during 
the first year of her residence, she says: 

"I find society in a high state of cultivation, much more than 
any other place I was ever in. The beaux here are, the greater 
part of them, men of collegiate education.******Among the older 

[4] 



ladies there are some whose manners and conversation would dig- 
nify duchesses." 

If our limits would permit, we might speak in particular of 
some of these excellent men and women whose society Miss Hart 
thus enjoyed. It was her privilege to know the Hon. Horatio 
Seymour, afterwards for twelve years United States Senator, a 
man who was earnest from the first in the cause of woman's edu- 
cation, and who gave the land on which was erected in 1802 the 
"Female Academy,"* one of the very first school edifices in the 
country built especially for women. She knew also the Rev. Dr. 
Merrill, who, on graduating from Dartmouth in 1801, had won the 
valedictory over his illustrious classmate Daniel Webster, and who 
for thirty-seven years was pastor of the Congregational church 
and a recognized leader throughout the State in matters of educa- 
tion and religion. She knew also Dr. Henry Davis, president of 
the college, who was eminent for his talents and eloquence and 
personal address, who was in 1817, on the death of Dr. Dwight. 
elected president of Yale College, and who reflected no small honor 
on Middlebury by declining the appointment. With these men 
and others of scarcely less character, not yet famous, but in the 
vigor of early manhood. Miss Hart, the young preceptress of the 
Female Academy, was called to associate. Her letters and jour- 
nal show how deeply interested she was in her new life. She has 
an intense relish for agreeable society; she attends parties and balls 
during the week, and four meetings on Sunday. She drinks deep 
draughts of the joyous cup of youth and health. But her strong 
brain never becomes giddy; there is too much of the Puritan seri- 
ousness in her veins. She keeps up her studies in history; she 
writes poetry; she paints; she criticises sermons; and withal con- 
ducts a school for young ladies with constantly increasing reputa- 
tion. 



*This institution has been referred to by local historians as the "Female Semi- 
nary." It should not be confused with the seminary, which was a later institution, 
located on the street to which it gave its name. 

[5] 



The building where this school was held is still standing.* 
It has been unused for years, but is guarded with religious care 
by its present owner, a son-in-law of Horatio Seymour. The whole 
of the second story was one large room, warmed only by an open 
fireplace in the north end. For in those days, as Lowell tells us: 

There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) 
To bake ye to a puddin.' 

But a fireplace did not always bring comfort to the school- 
room during the severe cold of that Vermont winter. The north 
wind at times would whistle around the building and penetrate 
the schoolroom until they could endure the cold no longer. The 
tact of the schoolmistress was equal to the emergency. She would 
then (so she writes in a letter to Judge Swift) call her girls to the 
floor and arrange them two and two in a long row for a contra- 
dance; and while those who could sing would strike up some stir- 
ring tune she, with one of the girls for a partner, would lead down 
the dance and soon have them all in rapid motion. Afterwards 
they would return to their school exercises. 

But in two years she closed her connection with the female 
academy. On the 10th day of August, 1809, she was married to 
Dr. John Willard. And this brings us to the second phase of her 
Middlebur)' life, and to consider the influences of this marriage 
upon her after career. 

Dr. Willard was twenty-eight years the senior of his wife, 
but nowhere in the annals of biography can we find a married life 
more happy than theirs was from first to last. From several letters 
we are permitted to see how intimate was the union of heart and 
soul between the two. As we read them, there arises before us the 
fair picture of the enthusiastic young wife, studying to make her- 
self less unworthy of the good and wise man who had enthroned 



*The building was torn down a few years ago. The location may be still deter- 
mined by the remains of the cellar, which is near a little, old well-house on the 
west side of the railroad track, near the marble yard, and not far from the passenger 
station at Middlebury. 

[6] 



her in his heart. In his absence she delves into the dry books of 
his medical library, to prepare herself to sympathize with him in 
his passionate attachment for these old authors. He is delighted 
to find her kindled into his enthusiasm and able to discuss with 
him intelligently questions of physiology and medicine. Then at 
another time she takes up the study of geometry. Dr. Willard has 
a nephew in college who lives with them — his namesake, after- 
wards for many years judge of the supreme court in New York. 
One vacation she takes up his Euclid and reads on, proposition 
after proposition, fascinated with the study. She thinks she under- 
stands it; but the general belief in the incapacity of "the female 
mind" for mathematics causes misgivings, until she submits her- 
self to her nephew for examination, and he pronounces her learn- 
ing correct. The same thirst for knowledge afterwards leads her 
to take up natural philosophy and to study Paley's Moral Philos- 
ophy and Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding. 
Most men in those days (perhaps some in our day) would have dis- 
couraged a wife in such ambitious and unfeminine studies. Not 
so Dr. Willard. His generous heart was pleased with her efforts 
after intellectual culture, and he was proud of her achievements. 
There began to dawn upon his mind new views of woman's men- 
tal capacity, and a disposition to take her part against man's lord- 
ly assumption of superiority. It would be a great error to imagine 
that during the early years of her married life Mrs. Willard was 
engrossed in intellectual pursuits. These were only her diver- 
sions; domestic duties occupied the greater portion of her time. 
Her son was born in 1810. Dr. Willard was away from home 
much of the time, and the charge of the household and the farm 
devolved upon the young wife, who performed these duties with 
care and prudence. An interesting letter, quoted by Dr. Lord, 
informs her husband that "the winter apples are gathered; the 
cider is made (23 barrels); the potatoes are nearly all in; the 
buckwheat is gathered," and so on through a long list of homely 
duties. Surely here was 

[7] 



A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food. 

So passed another period in the life of this great woman, a 
period filled with the happy experiences of wifehood and mother- 
hood. But clouds after a while appeared in their bright sky; God 
was leading them on to a higher stage in their life work. 

Dr. Willard was a man of property and of high social posi- 
tion at the time of his marriage to Miss Hart. He owned several 
small farms in the vicinity of Middlebury; he had just built an 
elegant brick house on Main street, now occupied by Mrs. Charles 
Linsley.* He had been a successful politician; he was chairman 
of the central committee of the Republican party, was appointed 
marshal of the District of Vermont by Jefferson in 1801, and was 
one of the directors of the Vermont State Bank. His financial 
embarrassment largely grew out of his connection with this bank 
through a romantic incident that is not generally known. In the 
summer of 1812 an adroit burglary was committed on the banking 
house in Middlebury. It was entered by a false key, and a large 
sum of money was taken without leaving any signs of violence or 
disorder. Of course the directors very soon discovered the fact of 
the burglary; but it was not so obvious to the public, and the di- 
rectors were called upon to account for the missing funds. The 
legislature was led to adopt harsh measures for their prosecution, 
and after a trial before the supreme court judgment was rendered 
against the supposed delinquents for over $28,000. The greater 
part of this claim, it is true, was remitted by a subsequent legis- 
lature; and in after years the discovery of the false key in the 
attic of a certain house f fully vindicated the innocence of the di- 



*The house mentioned is now owned and occupied by Mrs. Mary Tilden. It 
stands on South Main Street at the head of Storrs Avenue, not far from the western 
entrance to Porter Field. 

tThis house is now owned by the Congregational Society and used as a parsonage. 
It was at the time of the bank robbery the property of Joshua Henshaw. This man 
mysteriously disappeared at the opening of the War of 1812 and is reported to have 
gone to Canada. 

[8] 



rectors. But the records of the town show that the liens of the 
Vermont State Bank on the real estate of John Willard were re- 
moved only after many years. 

But the heroism of the devoted wife was equal to the oc- 
casion. She would return to the work in which she had achieved 
such brillant success before her happy marriage. She would open 
a boarding school for girls in her own house. The project must 
have been humiliating to the mind of Dr. Willard. Only a loving 
confidence in his wife could have secured his consent; but when he 
gave it he set himself to work with her, heart and soul, to the end. 

It should be remembered that when Mrs. Willard first opened 
her school in 1814 her "plan" was altogether undeveloped. She 
had none of those ambitious projects for the higher education of 
woman which afterwards animated her. Her sole object, as she 
distinctly says, was to assist her husband in his pecuniary affairs. 
It was while v/alking lovingly in the pathway of domestic duty 
that the Lord led her into the wider field of her life's mission. It 
remains for us then to consider this third stage in her novitiate, 
the light that came to her through her new experiences in teach- 
ing. 

Mrs. Willard's home in Middlebury was almost under the 
shadow of Middlebury College. The college campus was just 
across the street from her house. She heard from hour to hour 
through the day the call of the bell to chapel or to recitation. For 
four years she listened to reports of college life and work from the 
nephew, who sat at her table while a student. When she opened her 
new school she taught at first the usual round of light and super- 
ficial studies that the age had prescribed for "females." But "my 
neighborhood to Middlebury College," she writes, "made me bitter- 
ly feel the disparity in educational facilities between the sexes." 
She had already made private excursions into the realms of solid 
learning, forbidden to her sex, and she was profoundly conscious 
of woman's capacity to understand all that was highest and best 
in the reaches of human thought. Why should the sister be de- 

[9] 



prived of the intellectual culture that is offered to the brother? 
Why will not the companionship of wedded life be purer and 
stronger if the mental training of the wife is comparable with that 
of the husband ? Why will not the mother give to the world nobler 
sons and daughters if her own character be strengthened and re- 
fined by the highest education? These are hackneyed questions 
to-day, but they were new to the world when in 1815 they first 
throbbed in the brain of Mrs. Willard. 

Then the further question: could she herself effect this 
great change for woman? She heard the divine call; should she 
be disobedient to the heavenly vision? The cause was so just, 
so humane, so practicable, that surely if she could advocate it before 
governors and legislators she might effect the desired reform. Still 
the project seemed presumptuous, so that she hesitated to enter- 
tain it; she concealed it for a while even from her husband, though 
knowing that he sympathized with her in her desires for the better 
education of woman. 

But the absorbing, unborn purpose of her soul she could not 
long keep from the confidence of her husband. How he received 
her confidence she shall tell us in her own fervid words: "He 
entered into the full spirit of my views with a disinterested zeal for 
that sex, whom, as he believed, his own had injuriously neglected. 
With an affection more generous and disinterested than ever man 
before felt, he, in his later life, sought my elevation, indifferent 
to his own. Possessing on the whole an opinion of me more favor- 
able than any other human being ever will have, and, thus en- 
couraging me to dare much, he yet knew my weaknesses, and for- 
tified me against them." 

Mrs. Willard now addresses herself to the task of elaborating 
"A plan for improving female education." It was the slow work 
of two or three years. It was written and rewritten seven times; 
fully three-fourths of the original matter was finally rejected. She 
was meanwhile testing some of her theories by experiments, so far 
as her limited resources would permit. She formed a class in 

[10] 






% > 

3- D 




moral philosophy, and another in the philosophy of the mind, tak- 
ing Locke's great work as a textbook. The professors of the col- 
lege were fearlessly invited to attend her examinations, and to wit- 
ness the proofs that "the female mind" could appreciate and ap- 
prehend the solid studies of the college course. She desired, in 
turn, to attend the examinations of the young men, to learn how 
they were conducted, and to see what attainments in scholarship 
were made in college. It is humiliating to think that this privilege 
was refused. President Davis considering that it would not be a 
safe precedent, and that it would be unbecoming in her to attend. 
But let us not blame too severely this stanch defender of the pro- 
prieties; he was simply guarding well-bred society from a terrible 
nervous shock. 

These were the rough ways of the world — till now. 

ISIrs. Willard was for some time perplexed to find a suitable 
name for her ideal institution. It v/ould never do to call it a "col- 
lege", for the proposal to send young ladies to college would strike 
everyone as an absurdity. She has told us how she finally hit 
upon a suitable name. "I heard Dr. Merrill pray for 'our semi- 
naries of learning.' I said, I have it — I will call it a female semi- 
nary. That word, while it is high as the highest, is also low as 
the lowest, and will not create a jealousy that we mean to intrude 
upon the province of the men." And so the word came afterwards 
into general use to designate the higher grade of schools for girls. 

We can not enter into any detailed discussion of the "plan", 
as it was finally published in 1818. In many respects it is open 
to criticism, if we judge it by the higher standards of the present. 
The seventy-five years since passed have seen wonderful changes 
in our ideas regarding woman's education and woman's work — 
thanks to the publication of this same treatise. It is of the nature 
of a plea, and she is evidently cautious about asking too much, for 
fear she may lose all. Still we must regard it as a wonderful 
document — the Magna Charta of the rights of woman in matters 
of education. 

[11] 



It was addressed to a State legislature, for Mrs. Willard right- 
ly judged that the equipment of her ideal institution could not be 
furnished by private means, and that it could be properly managed 
and perpetuated only by a legal board of trustees. Those were not 
the days of large private fortunes and still less of princely dona- 
tions to institutions of public charity or of general education. Mrs. 
Willard felt that her only recourse was to secure the State patron- 
age which was at the disposal of patriotic lawmakers. Of the 
reasons that led her to apply to the legislature of New York, of 
her grievous disappointment after years of patient effort and wait- 
ing, of the brilliant success which she finally achieved, principally 
through her own great personality, it is foreign to my present pur- 
pose to speak. These things are more clearly matters of history 
than the obscure events of her early life in Middlebury. 

Let me simply add in closing that to-day the spirit of her 
teachings has thoroughly permeated the institutions of the town 
where her great work originated. The female academy and the 
boys' grammar school are now things of the past. But in the public 
high school and in the college the advantages of a liberal education 
are offered to young men and to young women on equal terms. 
Thus in God's providence do the wise and good build for those 
who come after them. 



[12] 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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